Exporting/Importing User Data

I am hosted with WP Engine and over the last month, we have been working on a newer version of our website in the staging environment. We are ready to take this new design live, however because we do not want to override the users in our current live site and thus we left out the database when initially copying from staging to production. This lead to things not being set correctly with other plugins, the theme, etc because all of that data is contained in the database.

I worked with WP Engine Technical Support to see if there was a native functionality or another plugin that could export my user data and import it into the production site after copying with the database but there don’t appear to be any. And there doesn’t seem to be a way to even determine what all UM touches in the database to the point where the article here in your Support Documentation, https://docs.ultimatemember.com/article/1549-export-import, has the following warning:

“Warning: Don’t use third-party plugins to transfer UM data from site to site. There is no plugin that can transfer all UM data from site to site correctly. These data are lost: user followers, user friends, user groups, user messages, user notifications, user tags. There is only one way to transfer all UM data from site to site correctly – export and import the entire database.”

This leads me to being in a bit of a situation where there are two possible outcomes at this time:
1. I copy my staging site to production with the database, I would lose data for the 1,000 users who signed up in the last month while the new design was in development (there are 16,000 users total) or
2. I would lose the design work that has been invested into and completed because it cannot be copied without the database

Surely there must be an option here that you can recommend as far as best practice that doesn’t involve losing one or the other.

I look forward to hearing back from someone!